Tutorial 3: Creating your First LabVIEW for FPGA Project

This tutorial will explain how to use LabVIEW for FPGA to set up a project file that will allow you to create code that runs on your Host Computer, communications to a Real-Time Controller, which subsequently communicates with an FPGA target.

This tutorial assumes that you are familiar with LabVIEW 2009, LabVIEW Real-Time, and LabVIEW for FPGA. If you need to read a quick start tutorial, see our other article "LabVIEW for FPGA: A Quick Start".

LabVIEW for FPGA

Launch LabVIEW 2009 by clicking "Start->Programs->National Instruments->LabVIEW 2009->LabVIEW". (Note: Do not use LabVIEW 64-bit)

After LabVIEW 2009 has finished launching, create a new project of type "Real-Time Project"

Now a wizard will launch that will walk you through all the options for creating this project, in the first screen, select Project type to be of type "Custom project," you will also want to choose a project name and a location to store it.

Now in the next page, the wizard will ask you to import any existing VI's, since we are starting a project from scratch, we do not have to do anything on this page other than select "Next"

Now the wizard is asking you to browse for targets, if you already own some National Instruments Real-Time Hardware with any embedded FPGAs, you can search for it on the network now, otherwise, you can have LabVIEW run in "simulation mode", which will still allow you to develop code for an FPGA and in many cases get a very accurate estimate of how fast it would run if you had the hardware present! For now, click on the "Browse" button

Select "New target or device" and then click on "Real-Time PXI" and press OK

Now you can press next again as we have just finished selecting a target

This final page is just a preview of what we have just created, you can just click "Finish"

Now we are almost finished…. Your LabVIEW project should be already open, and we need to add an FPGA target, so right click on where it says "RT PXI Target(0.0.0.0)" and select "New->Targets and Devices"

Now select "New target of device", and select my favorite FPGA target that National Instruments makes called "FlexRIO->PXI-7954R" and then press OK

Now your project should look like this:

You can now add VIs at three different levels, one under the "My Computer" tree, one under the "RT PXI Target (0.0.0.0), and one under the "FPGA Target (PXI07954R)". As you have probably guessed, wherever a VI exists in your project is where it runs. So we have a project with an easy way to run something in a Real-Time operating system, your host operating system, and an FPGA target.